Anti-capitalist riots swept around the EU Gothenburg summit last night, leaving three protesters shot and wounded, 12 policemen injured and Swedish authorities under heavy fire for failing to head off the violence.
The centre city was like a war-zone, strewn with rocks, burning barricades and smashed shops after nearly 12 hours of non-stop violence that lasted well into the night. In the worst violence, three protesters were in a Gothenburg hospital with gunshot wounds.
The protesters were believed to have been shot when trapped and outnumbered police fired in self-defence.
"Of the three, one is seriously hurt with wounds to the abdomen and is being operated on. The other two, including one with a gunshot wound to the thigh, were not seriously wounded," a spokesman for Sahlgrenska University Hospital, said.
Swedish Justice Minister Mr Thomas Bodstrom said 12 police were injured in yesterday's clashes, which followed similar violence on Thursday when US President Mr George Bush was at the summit.
"I have been told that 12 policemen have been injured, none of them seriously," Mr Bodstrom said. He told a news conference many protesters were from countries other than Sweden.
Up to 25,000 activists from dozens of anti-globalisation groups have descended on Gothenburg. Mr Bodstrom said 600 people had been detained by police.
He rejected criticism that police lost control of the situation. He defended the decision not to use tear gas or water cannon so far in putting down the violence.
Sweden's state-run radio broadcast urgent warnings to residents to stay out of the city centre.
Last night some 1,500 protesters gathered outside Gothenburg University's main building. They hurled rocks and fire crackers, forcing back police, who were outnumbered about 10 to one.
Two naked women cavorted at the front of the line of protesters to provoke police. Several hundred others formed a conga line, dancing to drums to celebrate the police retreat.
Police abandoned seven vans in a side street near the university after the location was overrun by protesters, most wearing masks and black hooded coats to prevent identification.
Earlier, rioters smashed and looted shops in Gothenburg's main central district, and set a huge bonfire ablaze in the area's main avenue.
The violence forced EU leaders to cancel a dinner in the city centre and remain at the conference centre.
Five EU delegations staying at hotels in the fashionable area were moved to safer locations. The demonstrators, incensed by tough police action to protect the leaders who met Mr Bush on Thursday, briefly had complete control of the central plaza.
Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson, hosting the summit, said it was "tragic" the rioting had drawn attention away from the summit debate on enlargement and the future of the Union.
Vowing to stand up and fight , he said: "They have no right to decide how we should conduct the democratic dialogue in the future."
Protesters blockade McCreevy hotel
The blockading of a hotel yesterday by anti-EU protesters prevented Mr Charlie McCreevy from getting to the summit on time, an outcome that no thinking Eurosceptic would surely have contemplated, writes Mark Brennock.
However, in what has become a be-nice-to-the-Irish summit, there was recognition from some member states that perhaps the row between Ireland and the EU over Ireland's budgetary policy and low tax rates hadn't been so helpful. Finance ministers from Finland and Luxembourg said openly that their criticism of Ireland might have boosted the No vote.
Mr McCreevy believes that when the Commission looks again at Ireland's economic figures in the autumn, it will realise that its demand for measures to correct the last budget's inflationary effects was unnecessary. Mr McCreevy himself turned in a low-key performance at the session, approving the EU budgetary policy guidelines. Neither side appears keen to escalate that row just now.